Last night was the annual Software Satisfaction Awards. It is unfortnate that Arithmo were unable to attend this year. By all accounts it was a great night with some very worthy winners.

Our particular attention was on the Accounting & finance (SME) section and yet again the winners were Kashflow, retaining the crown they won in 2011. A big congratulations to Dwain and the team at Kashflow.

Would like to thank UK Trade and Investment for a fantastic workshop this week, looking at strategic methods for exporting.

Finer details to report in the New Year, but really exciting times ahead!

For details about this and other workshops visit the UKTI website at:

- www.ukti.gov.uk

The good news is that we are a step closer to the launch of the new version of Arithmo. Unfortunately we have a couple of issues to resolve that are taking a little longer than we anticipated to resolve. Once resolved we should be good to go. I will of course keep everyone updated.

With our upcoming event in September, ‘Technology: transforming growing businesses?’ only weeks away, we thought it would be fitting to hear from an expert on Cloud Computing. Dalbir Singh Ahluwalia, ACMA of Arithmo Accounting Software, is an ERP consultant and advocate of utilising software to manage business information.

People and groups of people are driven to innovate to solve identified problems or to create new opportunities.

An effect of the downturn is acceleration of innovation from conception to implementation, with the aim of stimulating demand and reducing consumption as quickly as possible.

Growth in collaboration, since the global economic downturn, is one such innovation.   Collaboration allows organisations to enter new markets or provide new products through sharing of resources and knowledge amongst members.

Cloud based infrastructure provides a platform for all parties to realise innovation through collaboration quickly as there is no requirement for unconnected organisations to integrate their internal systems to successfully manage the delivery of their joint end product / service.

The effectiveness of a successful collaboration using cloud systems was sadly proven by the looters across Britain in second week of August 2011.  Though the task they set out to do was pure opportunism and immoral, it was carried out effectively.

By using cloud technologies and platforms, such as social media networks and BBM, the members were able to plan, communicate, coordinate and execute their “operational” tasks quickly.   This was a logistical achievement considering their numbers and many collaborators may not have met prior to their looting spree, let alone “worked” together.

By following the philosophies of collaboration and using cloud based platforms to enable collaboration, Fast Growth organisations can compete with larger, more established organisations within a short period of time.

Many of the larger established organisations are also recognising the advantages of working with multi-organisations using cloud based infrastructure and software as a platform.

Boeing for example, are now treating their suppliers more like partners and utilising their suppliers’ knowledge and skills in their specific fields; instead of dictating top down specifications.   Boeing’s aim is to increase efficiency by reducing lead times in the development and manufacturing processes; to focus on assembly and allow the suppliers to build the components.

For this strategy to succeed, partners openly share product specific (such as the Boeing Dreamliner) real time information amongst themselves using universal database as a platform; not too dissimilar to peer to peer knowledge sharing models. Cloud computing provides the framework to achieve this.

Arithmo online accounting software

If you are a small business or sole trader you could earn £50 cashback by referring your accountant or bookkeeper to our Arithmo accountancy package.

Not only is our software very straight forward for accountants to use, it gives them instant control over how clients keep their records. Arithmo can also be fully branded with an accountant’s logo and colours.
There is no limit on the number of accountants/bookkeepers that can be recommended.

For more details and our terms & conditions click here: Recommend Your Accountant.

Further to my previous blog entries we are getting closer by the day to the launch of the new system. I can’t give a firm date when this will be as testing is ongoing but it won’t be too long now.

The new system won’t look much different from the current user interface, feedback from our small business users has always been very positive about this ease of use. However it being refreshed and early feedback is good. The screen shot below gives you an early look at the interface, although things may change yet.

First glance of new system.

In addition to a updated interface we are tweaking all screens and functionality based on user feedback. However, the most important changes will not be visible as these are all behind the scenes. These changes will allow us to add new functionality quicker and at more regular intervals in the future. We will be adding in an API and have been working hard with third parties on this, multi currency and multi-language modules.

I will keep you posted as the development nears the end!!!

Following the May update there has been lots of work done on testing our next major overhaul.

We are almost ready to release, which should be done in June (fingers crossed). What is important is that all the changes and updates work as expected. Our team has been testing extensively over the last 4 weeks and we can now see the light at the end of a very long tunnel!

All as I can say is it won’t be long now…..

If you look at our blog you may think that things are pretty quiet at Arithmo.Well, things could not be further from the truth.

Over the past 12 months we have been working on a major overhaul to the system.This overhaul should culminate with a release in mid June. I will post more details nearer the time on the chages we have made. The changes are not dramatic but subtle and based on user feedback, coupled with a tweeking of the interface.

Keep checking out the blog for more details over the next few weeks.

There will be a routine update applied to the system. This update will take place at 2.00am on Wednesday 20th April. The system should be offline for approx 1 hour.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

This month the taxman is concerned that many small businesses do not keep adequate records to support the entries on their tax returns. He believes that inadequate business records lead to inaccurate accounts, which means that less tax is paid than is due. In fact inaccurate accounts can lead to tax being overpaid in as many cases as tax is underpaid, but the Taxman would like to ignore cases of overpaid tax.

If you are a small business help is at hand to keep better records as the Taxman has launched a campaign consisting of education and direct assistance. The education comes in the form of the following:

· HMRC Factsheet: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/factsheet/record-keeping.pdf

· HMRC leaflet on record keeping http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/rk-bk1.pdf

· Business link information www.businesslink.gov.uk/recordkeeping

· Online tool: www.businesslink.gov.uk/recordkeepingcheck

The online tool is not helpful as it takes a very prescriptive and unrealistic view of the records businesses need to keep. It also uses a lot of unnecessary jargon that makes it difficult to understand, even for trained accountants!

The direct assistance part of the campaign consists of visits by Tax Officers to businesses in order to inspect their records and provide advice on record keeping. These visits are known as business records checks (BRC), and letters asking for BRC appointments have already been issued to a number of businesses.

The records the Tax Officer will want to see during a BRC visit are those for your current accounting period, not those that have already been used to calculate your business profit or loss reported on a previous tax return. These current business records may still be in